A couple more photos of Torrey Pines today and tomorrow, then on to other things. One of the main trails in Torrey Pines State Reserve leads down to the beach, to a flat rock that is surprisingly named “Flat Rock.” As we flew over Flat Rock a couple was enjoying the late afternoon sun on the rock, watching us as we passed by. Are those beers in their hands? I zoomed in 100% in the high res photo and indeed they are sampling the grain. Classic! Oops, did I just say that? How impolitic of me. What I meant was: Awful, wanton, bad, bad people, inconsiderate drunks from out of town who should know better. Hard to fault them though, it was a great afternoon for it. Tomorrow I will post a panoramic view from where they were standing.
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Children’s Pool, also known as Casa Cove, is a pretty contentious place these days. The Children’s Pool is a simple pocket cove protected by a manmade seawall. It has a fine sand beach, calm waters and fairly good snorkeling. And harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) are often found on the beach, which has a lot of people up in arms. Seal lovers want the beach managed for the welfare of the seals. Divers and swimmers are unwilling to give up access to the beach, and some even go so far as to support physical alteration of the beach and seawall in such a way that the seals will have no choice but to depart. Children’s Pool is often in the news these days, and there are a number of websites created by interests on both sides of the issue. We’ll see how it all gets resolved, if ever. I have a lot of nice photos of harbor seals taken at the Children’s Pool, and often receive questions from people about them and the seals. Four years ago I posted my personal feelings about the harbor seals at Children’s Pool and my feelings really have not changed since then.
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The Children’s Pool in La Jolla, also known as Casa Cove, is a small pocket cove protected by a curving seawall, with the rocky coastline and cottages and homes of La Jolla seen behind it. La Jolla, California, USA.
Image: 22302
Location: La Jolla, California, USA
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I spoke with photographer friend Jon Cornforth yesterday about some of his photography plans and his recent trip to Canada to shoot Stellar sea lions. After getting off the phone with him and checking out his website to see some of his new images, I realized I have not highlighted another photographer on my blog in a long time — thus this post. Jon has, in a relatively short span of years, amassed some amazing images and his future plans will generate more to be sure. Jon uses a mix of digital and film to great affect. In particular, his landscapes shot on film are spectacular, and often appear in calendars, wall art and in the form of fine art prints for his clients. I’m always inspired when I see his images. The home page of his web site www.CornforthImages.com is stunning, and he maintains a blog which he updates frequently with new work. Check it out!
During the flight that Ron and I took from Del Mar to downtown, we flew over three piers. The first was Scripps Pier, the research pier that supports the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The original wooden Scripps Pier was built in 1915 and was replaced by the modern cement pier in 1988. On the hill behind the pier can be seen many of the buildings that make up Scripps Institute of Oceanography. To the left (north) is the southern edge of Black’s Beach, while if one walked along the beach to the right (south) one would come to La Jolla Shores Beach in a few minutes. When I was in grad school I worked in the Norpax building on the far left above the sandstone bluff.
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SIO Pier. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography research pier is 1090 feet long and was built of reinforced concrete in 1988, replacing the original wooden pier built in 1915. The Scripps Pier is home to a variety of sensing equipment above and below water that collects various oceanographic data. The Scripps research diving facility is located at the foot of the pier. Fresh seawater is pumped from the pier to the many tanks and facilities of SIO, including the Birch Aquarium. The Scripps Pier is named in honor of Ellen Browning Scripps, the most significant donor and benefactor of the Institution. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, USA.
Image: 22293
Location: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, USA
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See more San Diego photos and photos of Scripps Pier.
I used to play Torrey Pines Golf Course on Friday afternoons with some buddies when I was a student at UCSD. We played both north and south courses, whichever had an earlier slot available when we got there. Each semester we would plan our class schedules so that we would be done with lectures by about 1pm on Fridays, ensuring we could shoot a full round before sunset. With a resident’s card the green fee was something like $10, and splitting a cart was another $10 or so. It was great, poor college students enjoying 18 holes on one of the finest public courses on the West coast, with perhaps the best views of any course in California. Ah, good times. These days Torrey Pines Golf Course is milked as a cash cow by the city rather than as an asset to be preserved primarily for the people that actually live in San Diego. Holding the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines added to the misery, causing course closures before and after the event, generating traffic and crowds during the event and generally making it harder for Joe San Diego to enjoy the course in his own city. (Don’t expect to hear these sentiments from the craven town boosters and the developers they serve, however.) It is tough to get a good tee time at Torrey since a quota of the best tee times are set aside for a private hotel near the course. The remainder are distributed by a company whose priority appears to be squeezing as much revenue as possible out of each foursome (including a “processing fee”). The vibe and attitude that made Torrey Pines Golf Course so appealing is gone. Well, that’s progress for you, at least in the minds of the politicians and business interests who run things in San Diego. As in most cities, these people are remarkably good at screwing things up. However, as hard as they have tried, one thing to which the suits have not yet been able to lay waste are the views at Torrey Pines. They will always be wonderful.
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Torrey Pines golf course south course holes 2, 4 and 5, Torrey Pines Golf Course, situated atop the magnificent 300 foot tall seacliffs, offers majestic views of the Pacific Ocean south to La Jolla. Scattered around the course are found Torrey pine trees, one of the rare species of pines in the world. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22312
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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Torrey Pines golf course, situated atop the magnificent 300 foot tall seacliffs, offers majestic views of the Pacific Ocean south to La Jolla. Scattered around the course are found Torrey pine trees, one of the rare species of pines in the world. Some of La Jolla’s biotechnology companies are seen on the far side of the golf course, along North Torrey Pines Road. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22320
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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See more stock photos of San Diego, Torrey Pines Golf Course, and photos of Torrey Pines State Reserve.
Torrey Pines State Reserve is a special place for me. When I was a kid, we drove down from Newport Beach to hike the winding dirt trails from the mesa to the beach, squeezing through the notorious and now-closed “Fat Man’s Misery” (a politically-incorrectly-named narrow trail which discriminates against the width-challenged), wondering whether we would see any free-ranging wild nudies when we reached the ocean below. (Sadly, we learned that the nudist be-ins took place further south at Black’s Beach). When I lived in Del Mar in the 80’s and 90’s I would run in Torrey Pines each day, slowly making my way up the historic old Coast Highway to the golf course on the mesa and then enjoying the downhill trail past Broken Hill and down the view-laden switchbacks to the beach at Flat Rock. We started our flight just south of Del Mar and flew over Torrey Pines State Beach, admiring the 300′ sandstone cliffs and eroded bluffs of the reserve, speckled with rare Torrey Pines trees (Pinus torreyana). I was able to make out all the trails I used to (and sometimes still do) run.
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Torrey Pines seacliffs, rising up to 300 feet above the ocean, stretch from Del Mar to La Jolla. On the mesa atop the bluffs are found Torrey pine trees, one of the rare species of pines in the world. Torrey Pines State Reserve, San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22285
Location: Torrey Pines State Reserve, San Diego, California, USA
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Torrey Pines seacliffs, rising up to 300 feet above the ocean, stretch from Del Mar to La Jolla. On the mesa atop the bluffs are found Torrey pine trees, one of the rare species of pines in the world. Torrey Pines State Reserve, San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22319
Location: Torrey Pines State Reserve, San Diego, California, USA
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See more stock photos of San Diego and photos of Torrey Pines State Reserve.
Here are a couple of new aerial photos from our recently updated collection of San Diego Photos.
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New Point Loma Lighthouse, situated on the tip of Point Loma Peninsula, marks the entrance to San Diego Bay. The lighthouse rises 70′ and was built in 1891 to replace the “old” Point Loma Lighthouse which was often shrouded in fog. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22295
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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Downtown San Diego and Petco Park, viewed from the southeast. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22300
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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Recently I had a chance to go flying with Ron Niebrugge, an Alaska-based photographer who spends a lot of time shooting in California in winter months. We had a picture-perfect flight, just super, and managed to fly over most of the landmarks we had on our wish list. If you use Google Earth, you can see the flight track we had as well as a sampling of the images I took positioned where they were taken by clicking both of the following two links (you’ll need Google Earth installed for this to work):
http://www.oceanlight.com/kml.php?file=20090116.kml
http://www.oceanlight.com/22285-22305.kml
I managed a lot of keepers and will be posting some of them in the coming days.
Each year, the Marine Mammal Commission prepares its annual report to the United States Congress. For the 2007 edition of the report, which is the most recent, all of the photos on the front and back cover are mine.
When the report was presented at a special Joint Session of Congress, the entire Senate burst into immediate thundering applause while several top-ranking members of the House were seen high-fivin’ in the aisles!
OK, that last part is a lie.
Seriously though, this is one of the most solemn, and inside the beltway at least, one of the most noteworthy publication credits I have had.
 Cover of Marine Mammal Commission 2007 Annual Report to Congress |
Pictured on the cover are three images of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) and a single image of a Northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus).
Tracy and I went for a walk along Batiquitos Lagoon near our home in Carlsbad. This is the sunset we saw.
Here is the last shot of the San Diego city skyline, over San Diego Bay, taken about an hour after the first one and the middle one, viewed from Coronado Island:
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San Diego city skyline at night, showing the buildings of downtown San Diego reflected in the still waters of San Diego Harbor, viewed from Coronado Island. A panoramic photograph, composite of seven separate images. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22254
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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Pano dimensions: 5219 x 13486
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See more of our San Diego City Skyline Panoramic Photos (or more panorama photos from places other than San Diego). They were shot with a 21 megapixel camera and consist of anywhere from four to thirteen separate frames. The amount of detail in these images is staggering, they can be printed absolutely huge! Maybe even lifesize?
Here is another shot of the San Diego city skyline, over San Diego Bay, viewed a little while after the first one and from a different vantage point on Harbor Island. There just a bit of after-sunset color left in the sky.
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San Diego city skyline at sunset, showing the buildings of downtown San Diego rising above San Diego Harbor, viewed from Harbor Island. A panoramic photograph, composite of four separate images. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22253
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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Pano dimensions: 3415 x 14649
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See more of our San Diego City Skyline Panoramic Photos or more panorama photos from places other than San Diego!
We have had some mild Santa Ana winds the last few days, blowing the haze out to sea and leaving behind fantastic visibility. I went down to a few of my favorite spots around San Diego Bay to get some new photos of the San Diego city skyline, including some panoramas. Here is the first of three that I’ll post. There was a haze offshore over the ocean that turned the sunset light the color of butter:
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San Diego city skyline, showing the buildings of downtown San Diego rising above San Diego Harbor, viewed from Point Loma at sunset, with mountains of the Cleveland National Forest rising in the distance. A panoramic photograph, composite of six separate images. San Diego, California, USA.
Image: 22252
Location: San Diego, California, USA
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Pano dimensions: 3144 x 16621
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See more of our San Diego City Skyline Panoramic Photos or more panorama photos from places other than San Diego!
The Wave, that much-photographed geological oddity on the border between Arizona and Utah. I spent some time there on my last visit trying to shoot appealing panoramas, but was not entirely satisfied, it is a tough landscape to capture that way. This was one of panorama photos I was happy with:
We’ve got permits for March and April already, and hope to get out there again this spring.
I got up early one morning while we were in Morro Bay to photograph the view from Morro Bay State Park, around the bay and north to Morro Rock. There was a slight offshore breeze and the air was cold and dry giving clear views in every direction. My father-in-law’s fishing boat is tied up to the Coast Guard dock near the power plant — it is the biggest boat in the harbor and you can see it if you squint really hard.
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Morro Bay panorama, showing Morro Bay State Park (left), Morro Bay and barrier dunes, Pacific Ocean, and Morro Rock (right). A composite of eight separate photographs. Morro Bay, California, USA.
Image: 22247
Location: Morro Bay, California, USA
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Pano dimensions: 2269 x 24021
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See our photos of Morro Bay as well as more Panoramic photos.
President Bush today created Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, along with two other enormous marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean. With the stroke of a pen, President Bush has protected more marine habitat by far (measured in square miles) that any person in history. This is particularly exciting for me, as I was fortunate enough to visit Rose Atoll in 1995 as a member of a United States Fish and Wildlife Service damage assessment team studying a vessel grounding there. Rose Atoll is remote, unique and beautiful. Among other notable distinctions, Rose Atoll is composed primarily of pink Porolithon coralline algae. That’s right, the atoll is pink. And it is an important nesting site for seabirds and sea turtles. We also observed humpback whales while we were there, in addition to many fishes and sharks. I have visited quite a few islands in my life, and Rose Atoll is the most special of them all. I’m very glad to know that besides being a National Wildlife Refuge, it has now become Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.
Alison Green PhD, a senior marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy’s Tropical Marine Conservation Program, was part of the scientific team I accompanied. In her blog, shares my sentiment that Rose Atoll is indeed a deeply special place.
Link to the Establishment of the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument - A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America
Link to information about Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
Link to my photos of Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.
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Coralline algae reef. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA.
Image: 00729
Species: Porolithon sp.
Location: Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA
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Rose Islet. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA.
Image: 00829
Location: Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA
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Brown booby. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA.
Image: 00915
Species: Sula leucogaster
Location: Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA
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If you are a third grader in California, chances are that you are doing your Mission Project this year, and my third grade daughter is no exception. Each student is assigned one of the California missions upon which to report. My daughter reported on Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (she received an “A” no less!). As we made the rounds of relatives over the holiday, we stopped in San Luis Obispo so she could see the mission in person. What an easy visit — just a couple minutes off Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo, easy parking and no crowds. We spent about 30 minutes at the mission before moving on down the coast for lunch in Santa Barbara.
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Mission San Luis Obispo del Tolosa, chapel interior. Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, San Luis Obispo, California, USA.
Image: 22230
Location: Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, California, USA
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Mission San Luis Obispo del Tolosa, chapel interior. Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, San Luis Obispo, California, USA.
Image: 22232
Location: Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, California, USA
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Mission bells, Mission San Luis Obispo del Tolosa. Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, San Luis Obispo, California, USA.
Image: 22233
Location: Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, California, USA
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Mount San Jacinto had a lot of snow over the Christmas holiday, the result of a couple of really cold storms passing through recently. Here San Jacinto is seen with some of the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm wind turbines (windmills) at its base.
While out in the desert for the holiday, I made a early morning drive to see San Jacinto covered by recent snow. I stopped at my favorite promontory to get a few shots of the wind turbines (wind mills). The wind was really howling through the San Gorgonio Pass this morning, but only about 20% of the turbines were spinning when I was there. Here is an assortment of wind turbines from the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm, with Mount San Gorgonio covered in snow in the distance.
Have you ever seen those layers of blue, purple and pink along the horizon just before sunrise? The darker sky, lowest on the horizon, is actually the shadow of the Earth cast upon the atmosphere, while the lighter sky above is the atmosphere as it is lit by the sun. As dawn nears, the shadowed portion of the sky is squeezed down on the horizon and disappears. The pink in the upper “layer” is the result of the sun passing at a highly oblique angle through the dust-filled atmosphere to the east, colored by the particulate suspended in the air.
